D&D 4E Anyone playing 4e at the moment?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I tried to grapple with this a bit, but not in any systematic way. Sometimes I used note paper to just track separation (a bit like Traveller range bands) if the field of battle became mobile. (And the (non-)treatment of diagonals certainly helps with that!)

And we did use maps with big distances on them, including A3 blow-ups of the G2 maps (still treating the squares as 10', and ad-hoccing the location of PCs within them when single-square distances mattered).

But the scale of powers - pushing, jumping, etc - didn't change. So our biggest push was still probably only 8 squares (an Invoker using Thunderwave) and our biggest polearm sweep at reach 2 (some combination of epic destiny + fighter feats pulled this off).

Right, and I remember late late 4e WotC came down with a whole bunch of nerfs on the zone sizes of epic powers. Like, the zone size for the cleric's Turn Undead class ability was HUGE at epic by PHB1 (close burst 8, meaning all squares within 8 of the cleric, or a 17x17 square zone). They never really gave detailed explanations of errata, but my understanding was that they felt nobody every played on maps of that size. So these huge zones were felt to be effectively 'infinite range' and detracted from tactics more than anything else.

So, yeah, I thought of making 'Mythic' HoML use 30 meter squares (sorry feet, you lose). NOW you have characters tossing each other a football field, or I guess 2.5 of them if its 8 squares, lol. A 'Mythic Fireball' would obliterate a good chunk of my neighborhood, and would certainly do massive damage to your average D&D town! Not even the rulers of the City of Brass would like to see fights of that scale inside city limits, lol.

It also means you start to see these Mythic figures as really standing out, they're not just bigger hit points and whatnot, their battlegrounds are entire districts, they can now really fight monsters that stand 100 meters tall, etc. and its easily handled. I mean, look at superhero movies, they're already there. As are many ancient myths. I aim big!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Here in London that would be an Epic yard, and you'd be a level 28 Oligarch!

Yeah, it is a 1960's Seattle outer suburb sized yard, lol. Only we're not quite so 'outer' anymore, though its still kind of on the edge of Renton. Actually WotC is only about 3 miles from my house. But I guess I don't cut it in their eyes, they'll only hire young guys I suspect! :/

 

[darjr]

There has to be some kind of 4e discord or something. Hmmm maybe see the MCDM discord’s.

 

[pemerton]

Here in London that would be an Epic yard, and you'd be a level 28 Oligarch!

I'm under similar conditions in inner-city Melbourne. (But our suburbs are a bit more luxurious than London.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

sure its not a mechanic but lets look at how exploring the implications of that ability further interacts with or begs for mechanics

I can with a dead enemy steal his eye color scales to I can with a drop of blood (enemy bloodied) steal their eye color. or even I can at a mere touch steal the subjects eye color (and they likely wont notice)
I can with a dead enemy steal his entire appearance. (now it appears he is alive and I am dead or his body now appears invisible)
or scales to I can with a drop of blood (enemy bloodied) steal their appearance.

We very much could have scaling

Oh, sure. I mean, ToL kind of just gives you the "make a check and it happens" without any real conditions or requirements IIRC, so it is pretty 'Epic'. OTOH there really isn't AFAIK any paragon or heroic version to scale up.

This is one interesting thing with 4e. While there ARE powers that can be seen as scaled up versions of other powers, and some things like the Cleric Turn Undead scale fairly hard within themselves, you don't really see a lot of straight up progressions where you have an unabashed series of "I'm just making bigger nastier versions of this now" so much in 4e. I mean, that doesn't seem to be what the designers chose to emphasize heavily. It was probably a smart choice, as they seem to be more interested in the progression of effects, action economy, etc. vs "bigger fireball that does 5x more damage"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There has to be some kind of 4e discord or something. Hmmm maybe see the MCDM discord’s.

4e Discord LOL. Never really checked it out, but I did bookmark it. Give it a shot...

 

[Garthanos]

Rules compendium is just a lot more concise than either of the DMGs.

Not sure I want concise DMG material or actually recommend concise for new DMs? Elaboration on some things including Skill Challenges seem more valuable than keeping the word count down.

They are all good books. MM3, MV, and MV:ttNV are the 3 fully updated MMs, MM1 and MM2 are pretty solid, but the later 3 books revisited a lot of monsters and made improvements that are pretty noticeable. MV is the ONE that I would have, above others, as it was intended to recapitulate the core monsters in an Essentials badged product.

I have MV but MV:ttNV seems more than just more of the same, has things which might be almost experimental.

There has to be some kind of 4e discord or something. Hmmm maybe see the MCDM discord’s.

There definitely is...

4e Discord LOL. Never really checked it out, but I did bookmark it. Give it a shot...

out of date book mark a lot of them are lasts only a day or something

 

[Garthanos]

Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities

Discord is the easiest way to communicate over voice, video, and text. Chat, hang out, and stay close with your friends and communities.

discord.gg

 

[Garthanos]

Oh, sure. I mean, ToL kind of just gives you the "make a check and it happens" without any real conditions or requirements IIRC, so it is pretty 'Epic'. OTOH there really isn't AFAIK any paragon or heroic version to scale up.

I

No the intangible theft requires a defeated enemy.

This is one interesting thing with 4e. While there ARE powers that can be seen as scaled up versions of other powers, and some things like the Cleric Turn Undead scale fairly hard within themselves, you don't really see a lot of straight up progressions where you have an unabashed series of "I'm just making bigger nastier versions of this now" so much in 4e. I mean, that doesn't seem to be what the designers chose to emphasize heavily. It was probably a smart choice, as they seem to be more interested in the progression of effects, action economy, etc. vs "bigger fireball that does 5x more damage"

Some powers feel signature ... and if you look closely many do have higher level versions or ones that could be reflavored as such. Come and Get it has One. (I think they should have given it more significant range it usually does in the movies)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities

Discord is the easiest way to communicate over voice, video, and text. Chat, hang out, and stay close with your friends and communities.

discord.gg

Yeah, now I remember why I gave up on Discord, it is just incomprehensible. It just asks me to 'claim my account' but there's no actual way to do that. If I put in my email it just tells me that email is 'already registered', but no it isn't, and there's no such thing as a 'login' or any way whatsoever that I could ever find to go back and try to recover a password or somehow get my email out of whatever jail they put it in.

Gawd I hate it when people design these horribly nonstandard UX and workflows. Just put a blasted login at the top of your site lever EVERY other site on the entire internet. Any of you that are application developers, REMEMBER THIS, if you don't do it like everyone else does YOU ARE WRONG, not them. lol.